The future of e-commerce: the great mall of China
电商的未来：中国模式
The next big thing in retail comes with Chinese characteristics.
零售业的下一场大变革是带有中国特色的。
Almost everyone in China knows “Austin” Li Jiaqi.
在中国，李佳琪几乎人人皆知。
The 28-year-old “Lipstick Brother”, started out flogging make-up products in Nanchang, a provincial city, and now sells them to millions by live-streaming on Taobao, part of Alibaba, China’s biggest internet retailer—once shifting 15,000 sticks of lipstick in five minutes.
这位28岁的“口红一哥”，在省级城市南昌卖化妆品起步，现在通过淘宝（中国最大网络零售商阿里巴巴集团旗下平台）直播向数百万人销售化妆品，曾在五分钟内将15000只口红销售一空。
Some will recognise Chen Yi, nicknamed “Little Monster”, a 24-year-old girl-next-door from the coastal city of Qingdao who sells sunscreen, snacks and lots more besides to her 20,000 followers on WeChat, a ubiquitous messaging app: a nice supplement to her day job as a bartender.
有些人可能认识昵称“小怪兽”的陈怡（音译），她是一位来自海滨城市青岛的24岁邻家女孩，在微信这一无处不在的社交平台上向其20000位好友销售防晒、零食以及很多其他的商品：这很好地贴补了她白天的酒保工作收入。
More obscure but no less enterprising, farmers and fishermen show off juicy apples or prize lobsters in short videos, digital showmanship accompanied by new delivery networks that allow city dwellers to procure the produce.
知名度不高但同样劲头十足的农民和渔民在短视频里展示多汁的苹果或肥美的龙虾，得益于数字表演以及新兴配送网络，城市人群能够买到这些农产品。
Such are the faces—lipsticked, sunscreened, weather-worn or besnorkeled—that have helped propel an explosion of e-commerce in China.
这些涂口红的、涂防晒的、风吹日晒的或是戴着潜水呼吸管的面孔，推动了中国电商的巨大繁荣。
In rapid-fire videos or days-long jamborees, they flicker across hundreds of millions of smartphone screens in a cyber-bazaar that in 2019 was almost twice the size of those of America, Britain, Germany, Japan and South Korea combined—and growing faster.
在接二连三的短视频中，或是在持续数天的购物狂欢中，这些人的脸在数亿人的手机视频中闪过。这个网络集市的规模在2019年是美国、英国、德国、日本和韩国总和的两倍，而且在更加快速地增长。
As online shopping has soared, even before covid-19 added extra fuel, Chinese internet
firms have dreamed up new ways to engage consumers.
在新冠疫情推波助澜之前，随着网上购物的迅猛发展，中国的网络公司就已经想出了新的吸引消费者的方法。
In contrast to Taobao, the new ventures do not yet make money. But they are growing apace.
与淘宝不同，这些新公司尚未盈利，但是它们正在迅速发展。
Chinese tech firms are pouring fortunes into them.
中国科技公司正在向这些公司大量投资。
Some of this capital flows straight back out as subsidies to entice buyers and sellers to the platforms, which clearly cannot go on for ever.
部分资金被用作补贴来吸引买家和卖家加入平台，相当于一投进去就直接流出，这种模式显然不可持续。
But the effervescence is here to stay—and Westerners are only starting to notice.
但是活跃的势头仍未衰退，而且西方人才刚刚注意到这一点。
Lubomira Rochet, head of digital marketing at L’Oréal, a French beauty behemoth, contrasts the bottom-up, “consumer-centric” vibrancy of Chinese e-commerce with the West’s“tech-driven”, top-down approach.
法国美妆巨头欧莱雅的数字营销主管卢博米拉·罗谢特(Lubomira Rochet)认为，中国生机勃勃的电子商务是自下而上、“以消费者为中心”驱动的，而西方的是“技术驱动”、自上而下的。
Some Western tech executives dismiss the Chinese experience as a function not of creativity and enterprise but of structural forces.
一些西方科技主管不以为然，认为中国电子商务的发展靠的不是创造力和创业精神，而是结构性力量。
They cite China’s higher mobile share of e-commerce—90% versus 43% in America.
他们指出中国的移动电子商务占比达到90%，远高于美国的43%。
Others put it down to a concentrated market, where the top three firms, Alibaba, jd.com and Pinduoduo, account for more than 90% of all digital merchandise sales, a state of affairs that is beginning to trouble Chinese trustbusters, who on December 24th announced an investigation into Alibaba.
其他人把这归结于高度集中的市场，其中三巨头阿里巴巴、京东和拼多多占据了所有线上销售额的90%以上，这已经引起了中国反垄断机构的担心，已于12月24日宣布对阿里巴巴展开调查。
In America the online titan, Amazon, and its two challengers, Shopify and eBay, accounted for less than 50%.
在美国，在线巨头亚马逊以及它的两个挑战者Shopify和eBay所占比例加起来不到50%。
